Despite loudly declaring that he would be shutting his page down, thereby leaving the platform for good, Pete Evans has not only been on a Facebook posting tear across the past 24 hours, but has now fully enmeshed himself in blatant QAnon posting by dabbling in the movement’s oft-pedalled and deeply bizarre pedophilia accusations.
Evans, in earnest, never actually left Facebook at all, despite stating that he was going to back on November 20th.
Over the course of December, Evans has posted in excess of 200 times to his Facebook page, which maintains a following of just under 1.5 million people.
One post today has risen above the rest as particularly noteworthy, as it shows Evans, now free of the limitations posed by his remaining corporate contracts, fully embracing QAnon posting, heavily inferring baseless claims of pedophilia against CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
The line of thought connecting Cooper to QAnon’s accusations has tenuous links to anything based in reality, and is rooted in the same conspiracy-laden nonsense that lead to the infamous Pizzagate incident.
That unrestricted style of posting is notable, as QAnon and QAnon-related posts were put in the firing line by Facebook back in October. The baseless, and frequently ridiculous, movement has been classified as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI in the US, although no such official classification has been officially disclosed by any Australian law enforcement body.
Regardless, Evans’ furious posting on Facebook paints a picture of a man who spends practically every waking moment entrapped in an online bubble of lies, dangerous misinformation, and shameless self-promotion.
A cursory glance of his feed reveals 212 posts have been made to the Chef Pete Evans page on Facebook in December, with the frequency breakdown as follows:
- December 1st: 8 posts
- December 2nd: 8 posts
- December 3rd: 10 posts
- December 4th: 13 posts
- December 5th: 16 posts
- December 6th: 15 posts
- December 7th: 15 posts
- December 8th: 16 posts
- December 9th: 12 posts
- December 10th: 12 posts
- December 11th: 15 posts
- December 12th: 12 posts
- December 13th: 8 posts
- December 14th: 21 posts
- December 15th: 19 posts
- December 16th: 12 posts (so far)
Contained within are an increasingly unhinged pile of pandemic-related memes, anti-vaccination and pseudo-science rhetoric, smug grandstanding, and shilling for products from the barest of bare few companies that maintain a working relationship with him.
Interestingly enough, of those 212 posts, just seven have been flagged by Facebook’s vaunted fact-checking program as being either false or misleading.
The ones flagged as false remain active, but place a disclaimer curtain across the post that people can easily click through.
However the ones merely labelled “misleading” or “missing context” are barely touched; a banner warning is placed below the post, but not in such a way that it is immediately recognisable upon first viewing.
Across December, Evans had one post flagged by Facebook on the 1st, two on the 7th and two again the following day, and one each on the 9th and 13th.
Despite repeatedly sharing material that Facebook’s own internal systems have been flagging as either false or misleading, Evans appears to have suffered no restrictions or consequences from the platform. As his posting frequency clearly shows, he is quite free to post literally what he wants, when he wants.
That Facebook seemingly doesn’t see any of this – from a verified page with a follower count nearing 1.5 million – as much of a problem is, you’ve gotta say, extremely bloody concerning.
